Technical Support Forum

Greets,

Google is always your friend...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/can-i-trust-email-from-the-m...

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/all/is-this-scam/214bd1d4-...

https://appuals.com/security-noreply-accountaccountprotection-microsoft-com/


That said...

If you have really NOT used your @writing.com email address ANYWHERE, then there is absolutely positively completely NO POSSIBLE WAY for legit Microsoft to be emailing you here about your account. Period. End of sentence. That would be simply impossible. It's really that simple.

On the other hand, if you think maybe at some point since 2016 you DID use your @writing.com email with Microsoft (or any of their services - hotmail, outlook, office, etc etc) then the possibility exists that it is real. Interestingly, I've not received anything like this at any of my accounts here, including my test accounts... so it certainly would not be some mass phishing campaign against our domain. And I haven't seen any other mentions of this here. Thus, it would be very targeted to you.

In terms of the display address... There's different thing folks can do to show one address, but send from another. You can use the "Source" link we provide on the email view screen to look more closely at the internals of the email which can help to see if you're seeing the "real" from address, or something more sinister. It's possible they're using what one might call the "handle" of the email to show the MS address when the actual "from" address is something different. The Source view can help you confirm this by looking at the "From" section of the email in raw format.

When in doubt, it's usually best to login directly to the site... rather than clicking the link in email.

Good luck!!
~~SM



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